In My Own Little Cell
by KatxValentine
Summary: Inmate number 0801. Name: The Joker. Afton Kennedy Flynn has a lot on her plate as Arkham's newest psychiatrist. Can she manage to, at the very least, integrate the notorious Clown Prince into normal behavior? Never say never..
1. King

So earlier this afternoon I was thinking about how much I miss writing Joker-fiction, so here goes nothing. This is really just something I'm batting around and, depending on how it does, I'll continue, so reviews are really appreciated. I'm kind of digging the idea already and please, leave any suggestions you like. I'm more than excited to hear from you! Anyway, none of these are my own, except Afton.

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Arkham Asylum is not a place where you voluntarily decide to work. No one gets out of college or wherever and says 'hey, maybe I'll work in a loony bin absolutely brimming with the craziest crazies alive'. The death rate for its psychiatrists has become so alarming that the guards and security are known to make a blatant bet on how long a doctor will last. The typical running time is two months to, at the longest, two years. I like numbers because I'm best at math, really. I'm none too fantastic with words.

I suppose introductions might be good. My name's Afton Kennedy Flynn. In case you can't tell, my parents are Irish. My grandfather speaks fluent Gaelic and I picked up a little of it from him. It's a really pretty language; I wish I had kept learning about it in college. But none of this is important; the real importance is that this is my first day at Arkham as resident psychiatrist to the criminal known only as 'The Joker'.

His case file states that he's gone under several aliases (One obscure name in particular was an anagram for the words 'Clever Pun', and was also a state in Ohio. Really, how ridiculous?) and has been elusive enough to resist arrest and narrowly dodge capture for the better part of a few months. His accomplice was some strange woman who called herself Harley Quinn. She looked vaguely like someone I could remember going to college with. Rumor has it that she's shacking up with the slightly threatening Poison Ivy, now.

Very few psychiatrists brave the stormy sea known as Arkham, but if you learn to drift among the tidal waves and swim with the current you find the benefits are pretty fantastic. The health insurance is excellent and, with the scarcity of the (qualified) staff, the pay is pretty top-notch. Gotham City funds its healers well. Few are willing to stick around day after day, but I find myself optimistic, to say the least. Joker has specially assigned staff because, apparently, he's so deadly he needs almost an entire ward all by his lonesome.

The state he's in, when they lead me to his cell, is positively ungainly. His makeup is leaking, I guess you could say, since no one wants to get close enough to remove it. His eyes are practically melting into his flesh beneath the greasepaint smeared heavily across his face. That, too, is beginning to dissolve and give way to imperfect creases of honest, pale skin. His lipstick is crinkling in corners where his own lips show through. All of these things make a man I only saw on television so much less frightening. I take a moment and drink it in. Underneath all these colored streaks of clown there is _man._

The other cells are empty. Warden Sharp has explained to me that this is because Joker is typically known to talk others into doing his dirty work, and feels those with a criminal record would be too susceptible and, therefore, too willing to help the Clown Prince of Crime. So he's kept in his own small corner on the lowest floor of the Asylum, in solitary confinement. He receives none of the benefits the better inmates receive: outdoor privileges and the like. Apparently, he's even denied visiting privileges. How horrid it must be, I think, to rot away all by yourself for hours and hours on a big, empty floor because you tried to blow up an entire suburb and, in a few cases, succeeded. I don't lose sight of the fact that this man is a monster, but at the same time I strive to remember that this monster is a man. There's that word again; man.

Man: An adult human male. I think of it as a definition. He can be easily lumped into the word, then. He seems to be human; in front of me I note two arms and two legs, and he seems to be of the male persuasion, as I do not note the presence of mammary glands. As far as I can see, the creature before me painted thickly in disgusting makeup is just a _man._

Jeff, the old security guard who's the only one willing to put up with Joker during feeding hours, if at all, gives me a withering look. His eyes are pale blue. They're starting to wrinkle around the corners.

"Can I get you a chair, Dr. Flynn?"

'Doctor' is a title I take with great unease. It doesn't sound right or fit when you say it out loud. I have trouble believing its use at all. It's a recent development, I guess, so it's a little awkward. I reach up and push a thick strand of dark brown hair out of my eyes. It threatens to slip back in just at the corner of my vision.

"No, the floor's just fine. Thank you, Jeff. You can leave us, now." I offer him a slightly crooked smile that he accepts with a cordial tilt of his head, and as if to warn me he clicks his tongue and nods again. The security camera at the upper left hand corner of the room is what he's indicating. Apparently, should Joker scare me out of my wits and into a catatonic state, Jeff wants me to know that he'll be watching my ass with popcorn.

"Well, well, wuh-_ell_, lookie heyur." The face doesn't turn to me when I straighten myself enough to sit down on my knees in my skirt, not bothered by how cold the concrete floor is. I like to spend my first session with my patients sitting on the exact same level as they're sitting. Since he's on the floor against the wall, so am I. It's my own kind of attempted bonding technique. "If it ain't a purty lil tootsie roll for me to roll 'round. You're the next shrink, ain't ya?"

His tongue darts out of his mouth and, finally, his eyes flick open, spring to life. They're the darkest shade of green I think I've ever witnessed, accented by deeper, fluttering pinpoints of pale emerald. I'm impressed by the rarity of the color, but I don't say a word. I let him look me up and down, take the moment to push down a fluorescent blush when his eyes peek lecherously to the little cavern of cleavage in my blouse. I just got the once-over from a _very_ convicted felon.

We sit in this silence for a few minutes. Neither of us move or breathe. He doesn't even get up, just twitches silently where he is, studying me with a large, cracked grin and a nervous twitch. His gaze, I think, could move mountains.

"Gotta name, Tootsie?" He finally breaks the quiet, shattering the air enough that I can come up to breathe it. I mirror his grin just a little. He's beginning to crawl in my flesh.

"Quid pro quo. I tell you something, you tell me something. So what's your name, first."

"Loki, sometimes called Pan, Puck, Yaw, Eshu, Mantis—"

He keeps going when I realize what he's doing. Disgruntled, and sort of irate, I hold up a hand and sigh. Apparently, this is going to be much more difficult than first assumed. But what makes this funny-man into such a ruthless criminal?

"Those are all tricksters, and the first one is a Norse God. Do you really fancy yourself a Norse God?"

"I dunno, Ayyyyyy-ffff-_ton._ Why don't you tell—uh—me?" I look around hastily, unnerved that he's known my name, until I realize with a little relief that he read it off the silver nameplate dangling from my neck. I start to massage my temples; I try to breathe in what's left of the musty air floating around me, choked with dust specks visible in the dingy, overhead lighting.

This patient is going to be no easy task.


	2. Rational

Just to explain to any of you readers, this 'verse is meant to be a tie-in to my Dark Side stuff, so just imagine big, bad Cleave got institutionalized and Harvey's still running about having a grand ol' party with Ivy. I have no clue why, it just feels like the idea fits. Anyway, don't own any of these bitches, except for the mentions of Harvey. She's mine.

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Patient J (as he is sometimes called around Arkham, jokingly… no pun intended) shows no improvement within five therapy sessions consisting utterly of cat-and-mouse games and undertones of slight indecent jokes. He persists to dodge all opportunities for serious conversation and constantly turns the discussion in his favor toward topics he is familiar with, i.e. egocentricity and his own viewpoints on what would improve society. He often brings up the topic of anarchy in an attempt to persuade my views and prove to me his actions are justified.

This is _very_ frustrating.

In a span of two weeks and three days I have not even managed to make a dent in his psyche. No, that's arrogant, I knew by this point I wouldn't even make a dent, but I assume that by now, at least, I would have slammed the car door a little too hard. The makeup has been washed off his face, somehow making his abysmally dark eyes even more endless. Looking into them has a distant sensation of falling, further than the ground beneath my feet. The color is a clever ruse. He's got every quality to be nature's predator.

He's like the human equivalent of the Angler Fish. You want to move closer, but if you do he'll yank you in and beat the shit out of you. I keep a safe and anxious distance from him, but maybe that's the mistake I'm making?

Sometimes he makes a game out of it. He'll stare me right in the face, unblinking, unmoving, his mouth twitching systematically like his face can't quite contain it. His ears push back, I notice far too intimately. But his expression is as welcome and as at-home as a bird without wings, an awkward monster. His legs, long, stretch out in front of him and entwine in each other as he lounges. I'm halfway embarrassed to say there's something unabashedly sexual about him.

Slowly, though, I start to realize there's going to be only one way to do this. I have to consciously let him use me as his pawn. I need to make him feel like he's yanking _me _around on the chain. I don't say anything at all but I watch his lips curl into that grotesque smile, what I've come to call the 'thinking smile'.

Without his makeup, his scars are throbbing rivers embedded in his face; complicated, linear twists and turns. A map on his complexion.

"Whatcha thinkin' 'bout, doc?"

I'm silent for a few moments. I look up at the security camera shoved in the corner, the empty cells they won't occupy because of this one man sitting in front of me. Without knowing it, they've surrendered long before he ever did. The entire ward is tailored for his own special use; they think the solitude is driving him crazy when all in all he's perfected the concept of living in his head. You can't drive a nut-case insane with solitude or torture or any kind of blatant pain. It's not punishment; he now has hours of uninterrupted silence to hatch schemes to blow up Wayne Enterprises and a probable chunk of the Brooklyn Bridge, once he's bored of this city. I tilt my head at him to mirror his motion, scooting silently out of my chair. I start to mutter in my head; _one, two, three ceiling tiles. The same distance apart from each other, even._

"I don't know," is my response. It seems to satisfy him. He licks at lips no longer coated in serial-killer red lipstick and habitually puffs out his cheeks like a silly squirrel, poking his tongue at the edge of raw scar tissue. It looks like he's thinking _for_ me.

Patient J exhibits signs of a prominent superiority complex and obvious hostility, however, if his demands are given into or he is offered the slightest bit of hospitality, he becomes much less offensive and unwilling to cooperate. All you have to do is act like you're dumb enough to follow blindly.

I look down the empty hallway, past all the clear, barren cells that make up the bottom floor of the Asylum. This is meant to be a hospital seeking for the betterment of those too far gone. No one here wants to better these felons; they only want to keep them monitored and tied up and away from the light of day.

This freak of Maybelline-wearing nature should not be allowed to bounce around in public, but I can't seem to believe that he deserves (nor is it good at all, in general) for him to be cooped downstairs away from contact with exception to feeding time. I'm also sure they strap a bag to his face and just kind of let him gnaw for a while, because I can't see this creature getting food privileges like utensils and bread.

"There's someone I'd like to discuss."

His eyebrows float around. They're weird and wiry, but just as pale as the hair on his head. Un-dyed and pure, despite the damage from all that semi-permanent green Kool-Aid, his hair is an untouchable sort of bright blonde. It'd be pretty, if it wasn't shot to shit after all the product and coloring.

_Six, seven, eight ceiling tiles. Stop humanizing and start analyzing, Afton._

"Ohh?" He makes the simple sound his hand twitching out from beside him like he can smell the question coming, drumming his fingers across the floor. Is he nervous, agitated or fidgeted? I try to categorize but I can't rightly seem to.

"Harley Quinn."

His lips pull into an unsightly snarl of a grin, something halfway between. It's entirely unpleasant, and his whole face contorts like he's in pain. The word blows past his lips like it's an ancient curse in another language.

"Harrrr_rrrr_ley."


	3. Bitter

Time for him to talk about good ol' Harv. Oh, man, I'm going to enjoy the hell out of this. I own nobody, except for good ol' Harvey.

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His entire physique sets on edge. It's like, in fact, a dog presented to a predator. If he had fur it would stand straight up. The electricity in the room, cut off only by the clean sheet of glass between us, almost panics me. But I keep my cool and I watch his venom-green eyes lock on me. His mouth won't stop twitching.

"Whaddya wanna know 'bout the two-timin' bitch?" Suddenly, his air of humor has almost completely disappeared. It's nonexistent; it feels like, swallowed up in all his hostility. His eyes are suddenly darker than I've ever thought they could be.

I flinch, inwardly, and remember to push it down outwardly. Just push down the entire capability for how badly you want to vomit, and all at once I realize just _why_ no one wants to work with him. Because buried under the layers and layers of thick, funny comedy there is something terrible. It's intense, too much heat for one person to handle. _Touch the flame, too hot, recoil._

"Just…" he smells how afraid I am easily. His eyes flicker to mine again, sharper and hotter and darker than ever. He knows it like a bloodhound knows a trail. "…About her."

Suddenly, his demeanor switches. It flicks on an almost dime, his head inclining backward to lightly touch the wall. He inches a little closer to the glass, close enough that it makes me feel like there's no barrier between us.

"Oh, Ha_rrrrrrrr_vey." His tongue darts out to pinch between his teeth, his face split open in a grin. "Little, little Harvey."

Startled, I realize that he's never hated one person so much. He keeps going, rattling on in a tone I can hardly discern. His words stick together like crazy glue (the craziest glue I've ever heard) and his facial expressions twist into ones of total rage, then of slight amusement. It's like he can't really figure out just _how_ he feels, but then it dawns on him, right before it's snatched away from right under his nose. I try to surmise just what his problem is. Is it that he has some kind of raving lunatic mental disorder like schizophrenia cross-bred with dissociative identity disorder, or is he really playing us all like a bunch of stupid animals? I think he's just making us all look like idiots.

Looking like an idiot plus a medical degree is just not a cool feeling.

"So your relationship with Miss Tinkle was obviously _not_ platonic…but how did you _feel_ about her?"

"Are you _kiddin'?_" He wheezes, suddenly, and then stares dead at me. Unwillingly, I sink under his gaze. His eyes feel like they're too heavy to meet with my face. He licks his lips, then, I notice, twice in succession, and for the first time in our more-than-handful of sessions, he turns to face me head-on.

This is the scariest improvement I have ever made. Were I a woman of weaker conviction I would have lost bowel control.

"I was in l-o-v-e with her, Doc-a-roonie. L. O. V. E. Ya know, L is for the way you look at me, O is for the way you decided to operate on my insides and remove my heart?" when he grins, though, the grin lacks the humor. In fact it's almost perversely dead. I do the best I can to hold down the unease in my stomach and to tell myself _glass that's why there's glass between us because one two three four five six sev—_

SLAM. The sound of footsteps come rushing at me. Jeff turns the corner, heaving for breath, sweat gathering heavily at his temples. The beads of it slip down his face in heavy droplets. It looks like he's been running for hours. Then I remember that Joker's holding cell is down four flights of stairs, and those are a lot of flights to run. I quirk an eyebrow at him and he pants, dropping his hands to his knees to double and breathe. The Joker watches, calm, still regaining his humor-composure. I can still feel his seethe.

"D-Doctor Kennedy, Warden Sharp wants you. It seems we've caught Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn."

Before he can finish his wheezing giggles, the Joker stops dead in his laughs. When I get up to follow Jeff out to deal with these 'two new patients' (why they're mine, I don't know. They specifically said I was assigned to Joker…), the green-haired guy shoots me a look all dancing with ill intent and arsenic and hisses, "Send Harv-uh-ee my regards."


	4. New Arrivals

Patient 0264: Harvey Tinkle, alias Harley Quinn. Patient 0265: Pamela Isley, alias Poison Ivy. When they take in the redhead she's glaring hotly at Harvey and Harvey's doing nothing but being dragged by the balls of her feet.

0264 is unfit to even be considered a criminal. Harvey's eyes are a particularly abnormal shade of stone grey bred with a much softer chestnut brown. Her hair is just below her neck and a light brown with a strongly auburn tint, tugged into loose curls. She's the palest thing I've ever seen.

"And how am I supposed to trust you, Harvey?"

Harvey doesn't respond, just settles her unwavering gaze solidly on the floor and lets them drag her down the hallway. Though, you can notice that they're terribly careful with her because, truth be told, she doesn't look more than four-foot-ten. This girl in a skin-tight half-clown-dress and lopsided glasses is no villain.

_Dr. Flynn, please report to my office immediately._

The big boss calls and I've never met him before, so this is an experience. His head is shiny like a cue ball and his glasses are thick, perfectly squared, and they magnify his gigantically brown eyes.

"Congratulations, you've earned yourself a promotion."

Promotion? I've been here for what, a month and a half? I just stand there in my sensible black heels and my sensible black suit. I don't complain, though, I just nod quietly and push a strand of thick, dark, curly hair out of my eyes.

"You'll be having sessions with 0264 and 0265 as well as 0801. Dr. Evans is… no longer with us."

I think back to it. I've met Dr. Evans once or twice before—he was assigned to Jonathan Crane, alias 'Scarecrow'. I'll learn later on that Evans was supposed to be assigned to Pamela Isley, but at the prospect of this she did something so heinously insane that it drove Evans to quit. Evidently, Isley will only work with females.

This is _exactly_ the kind of promotion I did _not_ want.

And I was doing so _fine_ with Patient J, too.

- - - - - - - - - -

Interview with Patient 0264: Harvey Annemarie Tinkle. The tape recorder clicks and I watch the little reels on it turn. One, two, three times around. The low, dull hum begins, then gets higher until it's this unnoticeable dog-whistle of a sound shooting through the air.

"Name, please?"

"Harvey."

"Harvey Tinkle?"

"_Quinn._"

She spits the word like saying her real last name was an absolute insult. And the greatest problem is that is all we have to say for her. There isn't a single other shred of information on this little creature sitting in this orange jumpsuit too big for her tiny body. We don't have her age, her dental records, not even so much as a social security card. She's the lipstick stain on the rim of a cup that's long-since faded.

I told her to let them in without any bondage. This girl is no feared monster; she's the unfortunate accomplice in an utterly unfair situation.

Her nails are bitten to the quick (a notably nervous habit to a completely nervous person). Confinement was not made for this bird.

Eyes are deeply sunken into the face, ringed with dark black and bloodshot as anything. This indicates a serious lack of sleep, which can easily be attributed to her nervous disposition. This girl, I learn, will not be easily swayed to psychological assessment with simple babble. I need to talk to her, I think, person to person.

"Can I ask about your relationship with Poison Ivy?"

"M-May."

"Excuse me?"

She slants an eyebrow, a shade darker than her actual hair, "M-May you ask about Pam. Sure."

I look at her quizzically and she cracks the smallest grin. It's bitter, "I'm Harvey. She's Pam. He's Cleveland. We have _names_, you know."

I won't lie. For a moment, I'm taken aback. I can call _her_ Harvey because I know for a fact that she's the mildest of all criminals. Easily roped into things, wide-eyed, gentle—this four-foor-ten woman the equivalent of a frightened squirrel can't possibly be a monster.

"Fine. May I ask about your relationship with Pamela Isley."

Deadpan, hardly any trace of feeling to be found, "I love her."

This declaration of feelings has about as much emotion as a recitation of the pledge of allegiance. She's still docile, the glare has lessened, but I can't shake the sensation that this is someone who once had a bad side. Something all too pessimistic, something not to be reckoned with.

Intense slouch and overall inward posture, submissive body language, indicates defeatist attitude. Harvey has never been and never will be an optimist, nor even a realist. Harvey will be an effervescent and perpetual pessimist. The grass is not greener on the other side. In fact, the grass is dead.

"And did you not have former feelings for…"

She picks up the slack, "Cl-Cleveland."

And falls silent. Something there, though, I notice something _there_. Her eyes practically spark, like flint struck against a stone, then die out as though someone's tossed a bucket of water all over her Macy's Day Parade.

"And what were those—feelings, what was that relationship?"

This time her voice wavers the slightest bit, almost cracks, "I loved hi-him."

And I turn the tape recorder off.

- - - - - - - - - -

Interview with Patient 0265: Pamela Lillian Isley. For a moment, I hesitate in clicking on the tape recorder. Ivy's eyebrows, two distinct streaks of pure light-fire, rise when I lean forward to push the button. Ivy, however, I'd like in restraints.

I don't think another human female on the planet has been as beautiful as Poison Ivy. I think there are people who fancy themselves gorgeous, but none of them can possibly compare to the earthen goddess cuffed to a chair in a bright orange jumpsuit in front of me. She shakes her head, a dog vigorously shedding water, and settles her fire-red hair so that it doesn't brush into her face.

Looking at her makes my stature feel diminutive, though I am an honest five-foot-seven.

This woman is _an Amazon._

"Can you state your name, please?" the reel picks up a good, solid two minutes of dead silence and labored breathing, accented thickly with the spellbound stare it's taking me serious force to break. Regardless, I remain completely professional. Or I try to when my eyes persist to dart everyone around the room except in Ivy's direction. I remember suddenly, with relief, why the cuffs are required.

It's not that she'll get _violent._ No, Ivy will get the _opposite_ of violent. Records show Poison Ivy is endowed with a powerful pheromone designed to seduce any human being not administered an anti-toxin. This is achieved through the sensation of touch, predominately, and gives Ivy an integral edge by having the use of her hands.

Take away her hands and all she can do is bat her eyelashes at me.

"Pamela Isley," Her voice drawls delicately, it's enticing beyond reason. But, I remind myself to stop.

But the question is, can I even _assess_ this woman? How much of her is real, anyway, and how much is so clouded by her environmentalist insanity?

I go to open my mouth again but she cuts me off at the chase, "Do you possess a name as well?"

And I try to ignore that my mouth is completely dry but my palms are sweating. I know this because I rub my hands together when I'm nervous, but I can hardly manage to even make my fingers touch.

Against my will I choke, "Afton Kennedy Flynn."

"Afton, after the river in Ireland?"

I find myself nodding slowly. I don't even remember that I'm doing it. I'm hardly even capable of controlling my own movements. Ivy sits up perfectly straight against her chair, her hands linked together behind her, her every muscle rigid. She's like the prom queen.

"You seem to be of the dark Irish persuasion. You have lovely freckles."

I blush, but do my best to stay levelheaded on this. Instead, I go to frantically trying to break down something, _anything_ that'll make me focus. Anything that'll distract me from the scent of roses like the room is fragranced, and it's not coming off the leggy goddess in front of me.

It starts to click together, a Connect Four puzzle I should have uncovered when Harvey was in the room.

0264's relationship with 0265 is very, very simple. Harvey can be regarded as 'pure' in the sense that she's a human being who is defenseless. She is nonthreatening in the sense that an old dog is nonthreatening; years have worn down Harvey to a state of weakness and, now, she hasn't got an ounce of fight left in her. Harvey can no longer lash out at anyone else because she has grown too vulnerable to do so. Pamela Isley finds this appealing in the same sense that plants cannot guard themselves. She sees Harvey as a helpless flower.

I'm more confident, this time. I finally manage to speak, "What's your relationship with Harvey Tinkle?"

I'm surprised when she picks it up. "Quinn. She doesn't take well to her correct surname."

She takes a breath. I'm surprised to find she's actually trying to help me in a theoretical sense—like she's actually _trying_ to be cooperative, "I am increasingly affectionately fond of her."

"Would you say you're in love with her?"

Her shiny, ruby lips quirk into a grin and she almost reads my earlier thoughts, "Does a lioness love its cub?"

"I—uh, well, yes." I flinch and sort of glance at her. She's frightening, I realize, in the sense that I've never felt so intimidated in my life. I feel as though I'm very small and she's so much bigger, not really in stature but in attitude. 0265's ego is immense, and it seems to glower off her in utterly tangible waves. Pamela Isley is a human radiator designed to bring out any minor inferiority complex, any shift, even the smallest insecurity in a person and enlarge it. I hated my freckles before but, god, do I ever hate them, now.

"It is a mutual sensation of feeling. Harvey is a very unstable individual with a great deal many insecurities and flaws. She is not, by any means, a simple person to associate with. She can be the definition of the worst human being in the world, on certain occasions, but by many instances she can also prove to be something of entirely different stature. It is all, factually, a manner of finding the chink in her armor—or, rather, of locating the point where she stops being Harvey and begins being whoever she was prior to about five or six years ago."

I click the tape recorder off. Thank god Pamela Isley loves to hear herself speak.

I wonder how I'm going to handle my session with 0801 in an hour. This has been too much for one day.


	5. Stops and Starts

I've stopped counting my sessions with Patient J. However, I can say that this is the very first time I've ever seen him so enthused. It's almost like watching a hyena behind glass bars, taunted by a slab of deliciously thick filet mignon. He jitters in the meager chair bolted to the floor, his leg going thirty miles a minute.

"So, how's my—uh, little Harv-uh-ee?"

The legs of the metal folding chair scrape against the floor with the most horrid sound I have ever heard. It's almost as bad as nails on a chalkboard, "Patient confidentiality."

He snorts, grins so wide the corners of his mouth explode into a million little creases, "I believe you're avoiding the subject, doc-a-roonie."

I flinch irritably, but don't show it all over my face like I know he wants. Harvey's relationship with him, I can tell, is tricky and ill comprehensive. It's filled with ins and outs that neither party can well describe. The way her declaration of feeling for him came out clearly proved some sustenance of emotional trauma—the statement of love for Poison Ivy was unwavering and completely solid. It is unlike Harvey to be emoti—

And my thoughts are interrupted by what sounds like an unpleasantly nasal voice humming the Jeopardy theme song.

Loudly.

"Two timin' bitch is giving you trouble, isn't she?" The expression is outright malicious, this time. I can tell because it's accompanied with a glint in his impossibly green eyes. I shift uncomfortably, irritated because I know I've been found out and nothing could possibly bother me more. He reclines a little, pushing notably against the chair in a failed attempt to lean it back. Being it's bolted down, he can't, so he settles for going limp in almost every muscle in his body, "She's easier'n ya think to take care of, though. Just—ah, act bigger than she is. She's kind of a scayurrrrrrd little pup."

I can definitely say he's correct on that. 0264 is no simple creature to deal with, but she's nothing to be intimidated by.

"I think this is _your_ therapy session, if I recall correctly, Mister Punsworth."

He giggles, stifling it, almost snorting on it, "That's the very first time you've used my name. Good job, doc!"

Red at the tips of my ears, I give him a necessary once-over. He's frustrating me to the point where I can feel the tension in my wrists, the veins pulled tight like cords. I can't slip my hands out of the fists they're so harshly pulled into. By this point, my vision paints over with harsh sparks of glowing white just at the corners of my vision. I'm too angry to stop squinting, and too frustrated for this. I have been looking after three _very_ difficult patients for a span of two weeks already and I'm getting dangerously close to my snapping point. So I push off my hands and turn down the hallway, the only sound left the click-clack-clop of my heels.

"Uh—hold up, Ayf-ton, one more thing."

My shoulders square off, my entire body tight. I don't look back but I stand there, listening.

"Shouldn't get so…ah—upset. You look real little when you're mad. It's those frrrr_rrrr_eckles."

- - - - - - - - - -

Even though my boiling frustration with 0801 has bubbled over enough to make me intensely unable to continue that day's session, it doesn't mean my paperwork has ended. There's a pile of the stuff heaped atop my desk (in an office I've recently become all too accustomed with) as high as Mount Everest. And I've carefully mapped this out.

Patient number 0264 has been placed next to Patient 0265 upon my request. I want to monitor how the two behave with each other and, hopefully, it will be therapeutic to keep them together. Harvey sometimes cries late at night, hassled by what I'm not yet sure, but there's no actual record of past occurrences. It's as though she never existed. You can hear Miss Isley whispering her to calm, sometimes. The two truly do function well together. When Miss Isley's voice is audible to Harvey, she almost immediately relaxes.

"Hey, Harvey?" There's silence, and I watch the tiny 'villain' turn her head toward the wall. They both sit there, back-to-back, nothing between them but a foot or so of almost impenetrable concrete. I've been watching them like this for a solid two hours, glancing out the window to my office and listening.

Patient 0264 has a genuine sense of affection and trust for Patient 0265. The two interact closely and, I can dare say, sincerely love each other. Harvey makes a small sound of admittance in the dark and Ivy speaks again, "With…_him_ being here, you're not going to…shrug me off, are you?"

The air is thick when the little 'Harlequin' speaks. First, there's indecision, then there's the sound of full certainty in her tone, "I love you, Pam."

"But I know you, Harvey, and I know how you get. He's got some sort of ragingly unfair grip over you and—"

"And nothing. I love _you_, Pam." Ivy's taken aback by the statement almost completely. I question how long it took the both of them to get where they are now, to this place where there's a notable, amorous feeling to their quiet. Love is never feeling as though the silence is awkward.

"…You mean that statement truthfully, don't you, Harvey?"

I watch Harvey trace an absent heart in the dust on the floor beside her and murmur gently, "Y-Yes, Pam."

"I apologize for getting us into this situation. It was petty of me, I should have trusted you."

"'S'okay, I-I don't trust me, either."

I'm not sure how comfortable or comprehensive I feel on the concept that a relationship like this can exist between two convicted felons behind the walls of a notorious asylum. In some ways, the thought is double-edged. It is almost a comfort that two people, even two people who've evidently killed a few other people, can find comfort in each other. By the same token, it just sort of makes you wonder. How can two people in this situation create this kind of affection toward one another when normal people can't stop getting divorced?

I sigh into my cup of coffee. It's swimming with sugar cubes and more milk than I usually put. For a brief moment I catch a glimpse of my own caramel reflection, and realize how deathly tired I look.

_You're letting them all get to you. This cavalcade of psychotics is driving you off the deep end, Afton, and it hasn't even been too long since you got your PhD._

"You feeling okay?"

I'm focusing entirely on the washed-out fluorescent lights glowing blankly outside the window. The blinds aren't shut, and instinctively I open my mouth to say something along the lines of _fine, _but I realize the question was (obviously) not directed toward me.

"I cannot stand confinement. It does nothing for my complexion. I cannot _wait_ until I manage some form of allowance for the outside world, no matter how meager. I need at least some sliver of sunlight."

I hear Harvey's silence like it's a sound in of itself. It's customary—it may just be that I've given it some kind of noise. It's ultimately non-existent.

"You are accustomed to appearing deceased, Harvey-flower, I, however, am not."

For a moment, I believe that Harvey sounds genuinely hurt. It's not in any sort of response, no, it's in _just_ the opposite way. It's all in the way she doesn't say a single word when Ivy says this, and the way Ivy picks up her own slack.

"I always thought you were pretty, Harvey, from the moment I first met you. Albeit, I won't deny that a small bit of height would do you well."

Harvey snickers quietly at the short joke, It's the only sound of humor I've heard her make in my past few weeks worth of sessions with her. But, somehow, I think it is a noise of progress.


End file.
